Christ is Freedom

The anti-slavery organization Men for Freedom invited me to be their guest blogger for July! Here’s a preview:

So do I think Jesus would be the frontrunner in the fight against human trafficking and the rescuing of slaves? I am one hundred percent certain of it. It’s easy to be certain, because I know He’s come to set us free. The Bible says, “The truth shall set you free.” (John 8) Freedom is in Christ Jesus. If freedom is in Christ, then freedom is what makes Him. He is freedom.

Read the rest here.  I’ll see you Monday.

Hooked on Abolition

Last time, I told you about how God brought me to San Francisco. I believe He brought me to San Francisco for a reason. Almost as soon as I arrived, I learned to fight human trafficking.

In a previous post, I told you how I got into food initiatives, and how satisfying it is to give the hungry something to eat. It was so fulfilling that I started researching poverty and hunger closely. And then everywhere I looked, I saw a dreadful pattern.

The Funny Thing About San Francisco

Here’s the funny thing about San Francisco. For the first seven years of my professional career, I said, “No chance I’m ever signing with San Francisco. I will not go there.” People would ask me, “Why not?” And I would tell them, “Because I don’t agree morally with that city, and I don’t agree politically with that city.”

Anytime my team went to San Francisco to play, either the A’s or the Giants depending on the league I was in, we’d always stay in San Francisco. I would stay in my hotel room the entire time. I would only come out to go to the ballpark. When it was time to get on a train, I wouldn’t even leave the hotel and wait on the sidewalk. Instead, I’d stay inside and look out the doors. As soon as the BART came, I’d run to it, get on, and go to the field. I didn’t want anything to do with that city.

Your Neighbor is Hungry!

When I first started learning about the love-your-neighbor-as-yourself mentality, my spirit grabbed it. I mean, I was really excited. I said, “This is it!”

But then when God started teaching me about poverty, I really started digging. I’ve been researching poverty ever since. Poverty is a whole world of interconnected causes and consequences. The more I learned, the more I understood poverty’s complications, and the more I understood how people get trapped in it. And I could feel myself shifting.

I used to look at a homeless guy and say, “Man, you know what, how about you just go get a job. Shave, and go get a job at McDonald’s. It’s not that hard.” That’s how I used to look at it. I had no compassion.

Argue with Me!

As iron sharpens iron,
so one person sharpens another. Proverbs 27:17

Sometimes I miss just hanging out and talking with people that want to challenge me. I like a good, tough discussion about different ways of thinking. I like having my moral code challenged, or being asked to explain a piece of reasoning or why I hold a certain opinion. Even in baseball, where guys are really competitive, I’m seeing the level of discussion drop off. Now a guy will just as soon say, “Well, that’s cool,” and that’s it. That’s the end of the conversation.

“That’s cool”? That’s the state of dialogue? What about saying, “I hear you, but what about this perspective?” What happened to getting into strange, fun discussions about different viewpoints? Most people don’t seem to want to deal with that. They just want to say, “That’s cool. I don’t agree, but that’s cool.”

Well if you disagree, then obviously it’s not cool. So why do you say it is? I think there’s an idea growing out there that truth is relative. People have decided, “Well, you know, you can believe that. That’s your own belief. You believe your way, and I’ll believe my way.” There’s just no “iron sharpening iron” going on.

If you think I’m wrong, I have no problem with you challenging me. I wish you would! Don’t say, “That’s cool. To each their own.” No, no. If we did that with everybody, we’d have chaos. And anyway we don’t do that. When some guy kills some other guy on the street, we don’t say, “I probably wouldn’t have done that, but, whatever, it’s cool.” It’s not cool! When that happens, we’re challenging it. We’re going to put that guy before a court. We’re going to tell him why we think he’s wrong. And we’re going to have to put him somewhere where he can’t do it again!

That’s an extreme example, but in normal everyday discourse, most people don’t want to be argumentative. And that’s part of why justice is not always being served in this world. There are literally people out there that see injustice and say, “Hey, not my problem. Whatever. I mean, you gotta do what you gotta do.” Well, no, you don’t!

But we’re afraid of conflict. The people that stand up to injustice, right now, should be considered heroes. The staff of Not For Sale are heroic in their endeavors. So is the International Justice Mission. There are a lot of different agencies and organizations that are trying to stop slavery. They may or may not be afraid, but they stand up.

The problem is, they comprise a small group compared to the numbers of people that are now finding out about human trafficking and still go to bed at night saying, “That’s cool, good for them for fighting,” and then move on. It’s going to take a whole society to finish slavery once and for all. Back in the day when there was a social movement, for abolition or civil rights or women’s right to vote, that movement succeeded when a whole society revolted. We didn’t get better as a country because people said, “Well, to each their own, that’s cool, you do your thing, good luck with that.” We got better because we said no to injustice.

We’re losing that. Most people now are afraid of controversy, and I think that’s unhealthy. In the spiritual world and in the common sense world, I think that you have to be okay with conflict. There has to be an iron-sharpening-iron effect.

See you Saturday.

Consciousness Raising Part 2

A big part of recruiting players and their wives to the Free2Play team involved giving them some awareness about the situation. When Dave Batstone and I visited Bible studies for players during spring training, I shared some of my ideas about why slavery is a Jesus situation. I explained that Jesus would not support human trafficking. And since Jesus wouldn’t support it, neither should we.

Then I told them about slave labor. They were really amazed. “Wow,” they said, “slavery is in the things we buy!” And I said “Yeah, it’s in the things you buy.” But I also explained how slave labor is a really tough thing to fight, because it’s so hard to detect. For example, every one of us has a cell phone.

One World Futbol

One World Futbol makes an unpoppable soccer ball. You can try to pop it! You can squash the air right out of it, but it just fills back up.

You’ve probably seen pictures of kids in refugee camps or slums receiving soccer balls as gifts. But what happens when the balls pop? Those children don’t have lush soccer fields to play on. They play right in the road. What happens when they kick the ball into a barbed-wire fence? Or into some thorn bushes? Even if they avoid those scenarios, the ball skids over the rocks in the road. Eventually it tears a hole and pops, or a stray dog gets hold of it and bites through it.

The One World Futbol is immune to all that damage.

Why I Play

It was an honor to be interviewed by CNN about fighting human trafficking through Free2Play. It went on CNN International. It went global. Now people in other countries can see that ball players are involved in fighting human trafficking. When you’re able to reach millions of people with one interview, then you’re making a big dent. It’s not the local news!

It all started when CNN contacted Dave Batstone at Not For Sale to discuss human trafficking. He told them about Free2Play, and how we’re trying to get more athletes involved in enlisting people in the fight against human trafficking.

Pitching in to help the fight against slavery

CNN did a feature on Free2Play with me and Dave Batstone as part of the CNN Freedom Project. Here’s what it looks like:

As the regular season in Major League Baseball kicks off, meet a pitcher who is championing the fight against modern-day slavery. CNN’s Mark McKay reports.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

Pitching in to help the fight against slavery, posted with vodpod

Christians and Social Justice, Part 2

Thank you for all the awesome comments on last Tuesday’s post! I can tell a lot of us are thinking along the same lines. Since I’ve been blogging about the questions that I ask God and the things He shows me, I’m hoping you’ll do the same. Check out my blog’s new God page, and share your best stories about Him! I’d love to hear from you!

Annie asked me to say more about my definition of social justice and its part in Christianity. That’s a humongous challenge Annie! There are so many dimensions to the question. I’d like to focus on what God shows me, and what He calls me to do. I may not say much today about social justice and its part in Christianity, but I’ve got plenty to say about Christianity’s part in social justice!

I think God has asked me to hang out with people who have had things stolen from them. Think of all the people who have been enslaved, or struggle without water or food. Think of all the kids who struggle without parents. They’ve had things stolen from them, taken from them, and if you really want to get graphic, they’ve even had things raped from them. Think of what’s been taken from these girls that have been raped. They wind up in sex slavery and even their identities are stolen from them.

They don’t even know how to act sometimes! They don’t know how to be in the world. You see the effects of the anger that’s been pressed onto these young adults due to the situations they’ve been in, whether they’ve been stolen or trafficked. Think of these kids that don’t even have water. I mean, they’re living just to be in pain. What’s the point?

It grieves me so much. It is an injustice that these kids suffer in their bodies. But God shows us an even deeper injustice. These kids have been robbed of their dreams. These kids were destined to be children of God. They were destined to be someone great in this world, by reflecting the glory of the King. But how can they? Think of it. It’s so hard to reflect the glory of God when you are dying of thirst, or dying of hunger, or dying of disease. It’s so hard to reflect the glory of God when all day long you’re sent from one man to the next for payment, to let him have his way with you.

I want to do the very best I can to help these kids. You know what? If we can love appropriately, we can restore their dreams. We can restore them to who they are, and who they were born to be, and Who they were born to serve. They crave something they cannot find. Either it’s been taken from them, or they just can’t find it. I think that’s Jesus. I think that’s the whole reason He came. He came to restore humanity back to what He originally designed it to be, and that’s a culture of love and community and honor and respect and integrity.

The kind of injustice I describe here is happening to people of all ages, but it’s especially happening to our youth. And I believe that God has said, “This is where I would like you to focus.  Restore love and joy to these kids.” Whether in this country or abroad, I want to help the younger generation to know that they are children of God. I want to help them to dream when dreams have been taken from them by these injustices. And I want to help them accomplish those dreams.

I believe this is what God calls us to do. He calls us to free the captives from the bondage of slavery, hunger and thirst. He calls us to restore the things that have been stolen from them, their identities, their destinies, their opportunities to dream. And He calls us to help them know and accomplish their destinies as His precious children. He calls us to restore them to Him by helping them to dream again. And that, I think, is Christian social justice.